A mid-range PC and modern AI beats Hollywood at its special effects game

Hollywood visual effects put to shame

Warner Bros. and DC spent a significant amount of money – around $25 million – on reshoots for Justice League. In addition to working around the busy schedules of Hollywood actors, the film’s production team had to deal with another tricky situation – digitally removing Henry Cavill’s mustache.

Cavill, who plays Superman in the film, had already started filming parts for a role in Mission: Impossible – Fallout. The gig required him to grow a mustache – as you know, Superman doesn’t sport any facial hair. This meant the studio had to digitally remove the ‘stache in post-production or wait until filming for MI wrapped up. Unfortunately, the latter option simply wasn’t possible given time constraints.

Considering the film’s estimated $300 million production budget, you’d think they would have been able to do a better job. This got one Internet user thinking – could a cheap PC and modern AI do better?

As you can see in the clip above from YouTube user Deep Fakes, a mid-range PC is more than capable of pulling off convincing digital edits. As Gizmodo highlights, the AI had to be trained using thousands of images of Cavill although given the power of Google and with the right scraping tools, it wasn’t difficult to collect the headshots.

Those interested in digging a bit deeper (no pun intended) can check out the Deep Fakes Club which focuses on technology, education and journalism surrounding deep-learning based faceswapping technologies.